Thursday, December 22, 2011

Greetings, folks. It’s the time of year when you might see a bowl of prefab eggnog at a party and know you shouldn’t go there, but you just can’t help but ruin your life, can you? Do you try to avoid it, or just give in right away and despise yourself for the rest of the weekend? You know it’s wrong, even as you kid yourself that the bottle of add-your-own next to it makes it all right—even legal—somehow. Like it’ll all balance out in the end. Sure, pal.

But wait—don’t touch that crap. How about a nice coconut drink instead?

Sunday, December 11, 2011

OK—trying to work up some holiday cheer here at the Fogged In Lounge. The housemate’s busy doing the place up. The shops look like Christmas threw up all over them. The music’s everywhere like some mad scene in a noir film. Might as well work myself into the mood since there’s no beating it.

I made this Campari-absinthe thing last night that I liked a lot. Anise, citrus, tequila, it’s red—I feel festive already. Now where’s that drink?

World on a String

2 oz reposado tequila

1 oz Campari

1/2 oz lemon juice

1 tsp absinthe

1 scant tsp agave syrup

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Monday, December 5, 2011

I be free to go abroad,Or take again my homeward roadTo where, for me, the apple treeDo lean down low in Linden Lea.

—William Barnes, My Orcha’d in Linden Lea (Common English version)

Today is the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. My celebratory offering is one I’ve been enjoying for a few days, an apple-pear brandy combo with a little ginger to brighten the winter evenings. The Poire Williams dominates, as the name suggests. For the apple brandy, I had some applejack, which worked fine, though I’d like to try it with Laird’s Bonded—my preference in such things.

Williams’ Orchard

2 oz apple brandy

3/4 oz Velvet Falernum

1/2 oz lime juice

1/4 oz Poire Williams

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Whenever I go grocery shopping, I always want to buy persimmons. They look so neat. But I never really know what to do with ’em. I guess I could take the trouble to find out but never do. Or at least I didn’t until I decided to try throwing one in the juicer. There were two types available so I picked up one of each. Apparently, one can be eaten firm like an apple. The other one should be allowed to ripen to mush or you’ll end up with an indigestible ball in your stomach like that chewing gum horror story your first grade teacher used to scare you with. Seriously. Anyway, a variety to eat firm is the fuyu, which resembles a squat tomato. Core like a tomato, slice it up, stick it in the juicer. One fuyu gave me 2 ounces of sweet, mild flavored juice.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Playing with the juice extractor again to make a Thanksgiving vegetable cocktail. I went to the nearby market that juices everything to look for ready-made beet or beet combinations, but you never know what they’ll have juiced on a given day. So I did my own bloody beets, as it were, and a Granny Smith apple as well. I’ve been thinking about the possibility of a snapper-type cocktail with beet and aquavit for a while now, and here’s a first try.

Gimme a Beet

2 oz aquavit (Aalborg)

1 1/2 oz beet juice

1 1/2 oz fresh apple juice

1/2 oz lemon juice

Stir with ice and strain into a old fashioned. Ice cube or two.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Nicely earthy from the beets and the aquavit’s caraway, and of course the color is amazing.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

There was a half grapefruit in my fridge left over from the previous post, and I wanted to do something Tiki with it. This drink was inspired by descriptions of the old Forbidden Fruit pomelo liqueur, which seems to have been a fine thing indeed.

Forbidden City

2 oz gold Barbados rum

1 oz Demerara rum

3 oz fresh white grapefruit juice

1 tsp allspice dram

1/4 oz honey syrup (1:1)

Shake with ice cubes and strain into a large, ice-filled glass. Long grapefruit twist.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

The twist really makes this, contributing bright, delicate grapefruit top notes over the dark molasses and spice. I took the twist with a sharp vegetable peeler, removing a little pith with my bar knife.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

A big Fogged In thank you to Jacob Grier of Liquidity Preference for hosting this month’s Mixology Monday. Jacob’s theme is Retro Redemption, the resurrection of drinks from the not-too-distance-past, those post-war decades some still remember, yet others can only glimpse in pictures while laughing at the haircuts. We’ve been challenged to find a good recipe in all that banality, or at least find one that has the potential to be revitalized with a makeover.

For this test of mixological metaphysics, I’ve selected the Sea Breeze, a vodka-cranberry-grapefruit number popular in the 1980s, and which some would say can never really die. [Sounds of zombies moaning.] I have to say I don’t pour much vodka, which tends to disappear in mixed drinks. My favorite replacement is aquavit, which happens to go particularly well with grapefruit juice. While we’re substituting like this, I’m not that fond of prefab cranberry “cocktail,” preferring the full-strength, unsweetened, deep red juice that can be adjusted to taste. Honey goes with grapefruit and aquavit too, so that will be my sweetener.

North Sea Breeze

2 oz aquavit (Aalborg)

3 oz fresh white grapefruit juice

2 oz undiluted cranberry juice

3/4 oz honey syrup (1:1)

Stir with ice and pour unstrained into a 12-ounce glass.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

I stirred this gently instead of shaking to avoid beating it up too much and losing the intensity of the flavors. This is more bracing and astringent than the classic Sea Breeze. The cranberry suddenly seems very Scandinavian as the tannins get together with the caraway of the aquavit.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Thanksgiving week in the United States means that the holidays are upon us once again (quick—the pepper spray!) and I’m reminded that for various reasons, you need to have some booze-free recipes on hand. So how about the other beverage kick, caffeine?

Now I’m not talking about some gigantic dairy-laden thing in a paper cup. This is a shooter that your guests can slam before going off into the night in a car. And you can prepare it in advance and have it waiting in the refrigerator. You’ll need to make an anise syrup for it, and you’ll need to make or buy some espresso.

Parting Shot

Start by preparing anise syrup:

1 c water

1 c sugar

3-4 Tbs anise seeds

2 Tbs fennel seeds

4 star anise pods

Combine ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a simmer, stirring gently about 15 minutes. Cool and strain. Refrigerate if preparing in advance.

Combine syrup with an equal amount of espresso and chill before serving in chilled shot glasses.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Dreamers with empty handsMay sigh for exotic landsIt’s autumn in New YorkIt’s good to live it again

—Autumn In New York, Vernon Duke

Lately I’m longing for a Brooklyn visit, but I’ll have to be content to email and phone my peeps back there. In honor of the Big Apple, I’m posting something with my new Bar Keep Baked Apple Bitters, which add a light, woodsy spice note to whiskey and rum cocktails. (I tried them in tequila too but they were too subtle and got lost.) This one’s with Black Label, much enjoyed by my friends back in Brooklyn.

November Weather

2 oz blended scotch (Johnnie Walker Black Label)

3/4 oz madeira

4 dashes Bar Keep Baked Apple Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

I like the way the acidity of the madeira combines with the damp smoke of the peat like a chill you can smell outside the house but don’t feel cuz you’re inside and warm. The apple bitters mostly come through on the nose and brighten the madeira a little.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Kidding. In fact, I’ve been so into cooking different veggies lately that thought occurs that they ought to appear in more cocktails. I happen to have a centrifuge-type juicer for doing my own root vegetables and apples and stuff, though if I get lazy, there’s a place five blocks away that sells most of the ones you might expect: carrot, carrot-celery, beet, etc. I get the feeling after cleaning the juicer after carrots that I’ll be headed over to that store soon.

Bright-Eyed

2 oz gold barbados rum

2 oz carrot juice

1/2 oz lime juice

2 dashes Angostura Bitters

1 oz spicy ginger beer (Fever Tree)

Shake all except ginger beer with ice and strain into a double old fashioned. Top with ginger and add fresh ice.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

The carrot comes through, nicely accentuated by the spices and the sugar cane from the rum, but keeps the vegetal thing and doesn't get too sweet.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Here’s a Jamaica rum punch with arrack I’m working on—tasty but maybe in need of fine tuning. I used tea to heat it, which did the job within tolerance but could’ve been hotter going in.

Hot Rum Punch

1 1/2 oz Jamaica rum (Smith & Cross)

1/2 oz arrack (Batavia Arrack van Oosten)

1/2 oz lemon

1/4 oz rich simple syrup

4 oz strong black tea

lemon peel

about 15 allspice berries

Boil water to make tea and heat a mug. Pour boiling water over tea, the yellow part of the peel of a lemon and allspice berries. While tea is steeping (4-5) minutes), heat mug, then discard hot water. Combine spirits, lemon and syrup in mug. Strain tea into spirit mixture and stir briefly.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

I made the tea in an open vessel, and now see that I should’ve worked a little harder to keep the warmth in it. The spirits and stuff cooled it more than expected, though it was still quite drinkable. I’m also thinking I might’ve bruised the allspice berries a little too. But the housemate and I both enjoyed it. Well worth doing again. The Smith & Cross rum I used gave the right funk for the 18th-century feel of this.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

From time to time, I find a great drink from a bygone era that’s a little sweet for my taste. Such is the case with the Last Word, an equal parts cocktail that’s two parts liqueur. A certain amount of drinking of things not entirely to your taste is par for the course in the appreciation of classic recipes. But I’m not averse to drying them down if it doesn’t mean dumbing them down too. Luckily, the Last Word has a lot of flavor and adapts easily. I added a little more sour to cut the sweet, but mostly I made it ginnier.

The Last Word (Paraphrased)

2 oz gin

1/2 oz Green Chartreuse

1/2 oz maraschino

3/4 oz lime juice

Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

As with most classic cocktails, the history of the Last Word is anecodotal. Paul Clarke sums it up with typical elegance.

Speaking of the Last Word, I try not to annoy bartenders, but I had this once in a bar in Park Slope, Brooklyn while waiting for the rain to let up, and the person working there shook the thing until I finally had to stop her. She was a little too special to begin with, and didn’t like the customer explaining how he wanted the drink. Kindly don’t over-dilute my booze.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

I was trying to think of something else to do with my Gran Classico when this drink came to mind, which turned out to be something else to do with my orange blossom water as well. (Surely it had to be good for something besides melon salad.) Both ingredients seem 19th-century somehow. Careful when you pour the orange flower. Note that those are drops and not dashes, or you’ll end up with a glass of perfume. Do it in a spoon over the measuring glass and not over the shaker.

Bel Canto

2 oz reposado tequila

1/2 oz Gran Classico Bitter

1/2 oz lime juice

2 drops orange blossom water

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lime twist from a fresh lime with a sharp vegetable peeler.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Sort of a Margarita relative but with a long ago and far away feel. More bitter-herbal with a hint of orange blossom honey.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Many thanks to Kevin of Cocktail Enthusiast for hosting this month’s Mixology Monday and for a theme very close to my own heart: morning drinks—a theme I hold so dear that this very post was held up a bit by a protracted celebration of the morning. But fear not—dawn’s very rosy finger has touched the recipe offered below. (Hey, it’s dawn somewhere.) A bright and bubbly tequila-grapefruit-Campari thing that’s light enough to let you have at least two, even in the morning.

Morning Starfish

1 oz gold tequila

1/2 oz Campari

1 1/2 – 2 oz fresh grapefruit juice

1 oz lime juice

1 tsp honey

soda

salt and cracked pepper mixture, garnish

Moisten half the rim of a 12-ounce glass with lime or a little honey, and roll carefully in salt-pepper mixture. Set aside. Flash melt honey about 5-10 seconds in microwave. Stir together with lime juice. Add tequila and grapefruit juice and shake with ice. Strain into prepared glass, add fresh ice. Add Campari, top with soda.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

This one’s like a Rusty Nail but tarted up with some lime juice. I thought about calling it a Nail for a Screw. (Heh.) The housemate was somewhat surprised that scotch was the greatest component, as the other stuff tempers and harmonizes with the peat quite a lot. It’s another drink that seems so basic that I suspect an older version somewhere, but didn’t find it with a quick search. If anybody knows a different name, please comment.

Turn of the Screw

1 1/2 oz blended scotch (Johnnie Walker Black Label)

1/2 oz Drambuie

1/2 oz lime juice

Sitr with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Monday, October 17, 2011

A Scotch Collins sounded like a great idea but for some reason, I couldn’t find a recipe that talked specifically about scotch. In the end, I used David Wondrich’s Tom Collins as a rough guide to proportion. Maybe it was a little lighter than intended but definitely good in the warm weather we’ve been having, and the weighty scotch I used came through all the soda.

Scotch Collins

2 oz blended scotch (Johnnie Walker Black Label)

1/2 oz lemon juice

1 tsp rich simple syrup

soda to fill

Stir all but soda with ice, and strain into an ice-filled collins glass. Fill with cold soda. Lemon garnish.SOURCE: COMPOSITE

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Don’t know what it is—maybe the San Francisco Indian summer—but I’m craving fizzy rum sours. I was just saying to the housemate that my drinking today has been all of a type: brunch was a Pusser’s Navy Rum Collins, then later a Churchill’s Southside while I was taking a break from my errands. At home, I stared at the bottles for inspiration but it was the same story.

Smith & Cross Cooler

2 generous dashes Angostura Bitters

2 oz Smith & Cross

juice of half a lime

spicy ginger beer, about 3-4 oz (Fever Tree)

Build in a 12-ounce glass over ice cubes. Stir gently and briefly.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

These are all things that are made to go together. It’s nicely dry and clean, with a balance of aromatic, bitter, sour and strong. I guess it’s a classic drink, though I have no idea what else you’d call it so I named it after the rum.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

I was sipping a little Rhum Clément and thinking how well it would go with a tea note. This strained drink borrows flavors from the Mai Tai with Swedish Punsch in place of the curacao. I used BG Reynold’s orgeat. Lately, it’s got interesting little bits of almond, but they would’ve been strange in this so I strained them out.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

As a number of earlier posts attest, I’ve been having a lot of fun with the new gins from St. George Spirits. I’ve been playing with the Dry Rye and the Terroir, and now I’ve found the Botanivore, a sort of super-gin of 19 botanicals. The least outrageous of the three, it’s elegant dry gin for classic cocktails made the traditional way. Thinking of this classicism, I decided it would be interesting to try the three gins in the same Negroni recipe to show their differences. The Negroni has a ton of personality—a perfect match for three personality gins.

For the Negroni recipe, I went with an ounce and a half of gin and three-quarters of an ounce each of Campari and Carpano Antica sweet vermouth, orange twist. I briefly considered the classic one ounce of each, but wanted to emphasize the gin, and like my Negronis drier anyway. I also opted for straight up, stirred, instead of on the rocks.

First up was Botanivore, and the resulting cocktail tasted, well, like a Negroni. A good one. I wanted to use less of the other stuff to taste the gin, which is what always happens to me unless the drink is made even drier than 2:1:1.

Next there was Dry Rye, and the juniper and black pepper notes not only overpowered the Campari, believe it or not, but crushed it. Tasty, but not much like a Negroni. I remade it later in the 1-to-1-to-1 ratio, which worked a lot better. Big and fruity.

Last came Terroir. This gin is about surprise and the Negroni made with it was no different. The Douglas fir and bay laurel came together with the citrus and spice notes from the Campari and vermouth in a uniquely aromatic feast redolent of frosty mornings, the mountains and Christmas. It was sort of recognizable as a Negroni, but with a highly distinctive green note. I’d like to try this in the equal-measure version as well, though it was good the way I made it.

All three St. George gins performed very well. For this recipe, the Botanivore was classic, the Dry Rye needed to be balanced differently, and the Terroir shone in a special way.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

I bounced into my local with a grin and told the bartender, “I got me a new baby—Willett Rye!” I had it there several days before when the other guy was on. Unless I’m in a cocktailian bar, I almost always drink Manhattans if the place can actually make a cocktail. It’s sort of endearing to be remembered for a drink—something that doesn’t happen to me as much since I left off drinking neat scotch. And as I still like some alcoholic heat, I was very excited to find Willett. The bottle of single barrel rye I went out and bought within that hour was a 4-year at 55 percent alcohol. Mixed with a sufficiency of Carpano Antica and Angostura Bitters, it’s like driving a sofa down the freeway.

Friday, October 7, 2011

I’m not sure what I was browsing when I found the Drakensburger in the CocktailDB, a white rum sour with Van der Hum sourced from the Café Royal Cocktail Book. I liked the 1930s look of it. The Rose’s Lime Cordial would make it far too sweet, but it was clearly a Pegu Club relative. I thought right away of the new St. George Terroir Gin with all its evergreen funk as a more complex base for the aromatics of the tangerine liqueur. In place of the Van der Hum, I used Mandarine Napoléon.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

This cocktail owes some inspiration to the Slope, which Frederic posted last week and I wanted to try. But it would’ve meant opening a bottle of Punt e Mes, and my fridge was looking a little overcrowded with similar bottles of aromatized wine and the like. I reached for the sherry instead.

Monday, October 3, 2011

More homemade stuff again—and not by accident this time. I don’t know what came over me, but I actually felt motivated enough to overcome my sloth and make cocktail syrup. Come to think of it, I was inspired by the spicy rye and peppercorn notes in St. George’s Dry Rye Gin, my new favorite thing on earth. It’s a natural for pairings with all the fruits of fall and winter—I could even see it with a large orange vegetable or two. But for this syrup, I used a combination of ripe pears, figs and apples, about 2-3 of each. The pear really stands out with the juniper and pepper. Whatever fruit you use, poach in rich simple syrup (2:1) until soft, as you would for fruit to use over ice cream. Remove fruit and reserve (for ice cream, of course). Pour through a fine mesh strainer and bottle. I added a splash of Lemon Hart 151 to mine to improve shelf life.

Autumn Fruit Gin Sour

2 oz St George Dry Rye Gin

1/2 oz autumn fruit syrup

1/2 oz lemon and/or lime juice

Shake with ice and train into an chilled cocktail glass.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Old Father Time checked, so there’d be no doubt,Called on the north wind to come on out,Then cupped his hands, so proudly to shout,“La-de-da, de-da-de-dum, ’tis Autumn!”

—Henry Nemo, ’Tis Autumn

A big, smoky one full of fruit for the turning of the season. Fall makes me all dreamy-eyed, like I don’t want to do anything but sit around and watch the sky and the stuff floating inside my head. It’s the time in Northern California everybody seems to like best.

Monterey Bay

2 oz reposado tequila

1/2 oz crème de framboise

1/2 oz crème de cassis

1/4 oz mezcal

1/2 oz lemon juice

1/2 oz lime juice

2 oz soda, or to taste

Combine all but soda and shake with ice. Top with soda and stir gently. Lemon wheel.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

One of my favorite pastimes: wandering the shops eyeing everything as a potential drink ingredient. The tamarind paste is a brand called Neela’s. It’s 100 percent tamarind without seeds. Tamarind is something that grows from a tree. Tamarin is something that lives in a tree.

Tamarind Tamarin

2 oz resposado tequila

1 oz pineapple juice

2 tsp tamarind paste

Combine pineapple juice and tamarind paste in a shaker with a barspoon. Add tequila and ice, and shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Warm thanks to Lindsay of Alcohol Alchemy for hosting this month’s Mixology Monday. Her theme is Local Color, drinks based on regionally made artisanal spirits. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we’re home to some of the most distinguished craft distillers, Anchor Distilling in San Francisco and St. George Spirits in Alameda among them. I could go on about all the delicious things from both companies, but this post is about their specialty gins, featured here in two classic recipes.DUTCH UP YOUR SAZERACThat’s not a Cosmo in the picture, folks. As David Wondrich points out in Imbibe! Hollands gin, or genever, responds quite well to the Sazerac treatment, and while the results may look like candy from the bitters, this is serious drinking. Here I’ve used Anchor’s Genevieve, an unaged genever in the antique style.

CORPSES AND COPSESTwo of my neighborhood bottle shops less than a block apart have each decided on a different St. George gin to stock. Fine with me. The Terroir is the offbeat one: inspired by the botanicals of California wilderness, it has notes of Douglas fir, fennel, bay laurel and sage along with the juniper—a forest spirit. The housemate and I dig that kind of thing, and stood around the patio in the blowing mists, wearing our magic helmets and nipping the gin out of shot glasses. “Mm—arboreal!”

Whenever I get an unusual gin, I like to try it in a Corpse Reviver No. 2. It has the right degree of mildness to take on the personality of the spirit, and a botanical edge from the gin balances the sweet.

There seems to be agreement that this is an equal parts cocktail (except for the absinthe, of course), but the volume tends to vary with the editor. Dr. Cocktail gives a full ounce, which makes for a fine bucket of booze, though maybe more than you’d want to suck down on a hangover. The CocktailDB, gaz regan and Erik Ellestad give it 3/4 of an ounce, which makes up to a nice size if a bit light for general purposes.

With an assertive gin like the Terroir, it doesn’t make much difference if it’s one drop or two (or three) of absinthe.

The Terroir is very successful here—slightly savory, which is nice with the lemon. Don’t wait until your next drinking misadventure to freshen up your corpse.

Over dinner, my housemate remarked that the St. George Dry Rye Gin I urged him to make a Martini with for himself last night turned out kind of odd. We had both tasted it neat, and it seemed like a suitable kind of juniperous stuff with which to make a Dry Martini Cocktail. “Like it had a splash of rye in it,” was how he put it. Like that’s a bad thing? I sniffed again: almost like a dry genever. The light came on: Eureka! I knew what to do.

El Camino Real

2 oz St. George Dry Rye Gin

1 oz Carpano Antica Formula Vermouth

2 dashes Creole Bitters

Sitr with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

This gin, with its splash of rye, as the housemate put it, has an intense juniper wallop that rings out clear over sweet vermouth and who knows what else you might throw at it. A great cocktail ingredient.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Gonna find my way to heaven, ’cause I did my time in hellI wasn't looking too good but I was feeling real well

—Before they Make Me Run, M. Jagger/K. Richards

Tiki time again, or in this case, tikibilly cuz there’s definitely some rock and roll in this one. Inspiration came from the mug below, Ye Olde Treasure Mappe, found on a recent trip to Portland, Oregon. (There’s just something tikibilly about Portland, one of the many reasons I keep going back.) The Mappe is one of a numbered edition designed by Katie Mello of Rum Demon.

Mr. Keith

1 oz Bacardi 151

1 oz Averna

1/2 oz Cruzan Blackstrap

1/2 oz allspice dram

1 tsp absinthe

1/4 oz lemon juice

Shake with a cup of crushed ice, and pour into a 12-oz mug or glass. Crushed ice to fill, straw.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Dark, spicy, intense. This one made me think right away of a certain guitarist, but shares a name with my housemate’s dad as well. This drink is for him.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

There are a few variations of the Dry Martini recipe remixed with aquavit. Here I’ve decided to follow the Martini proportions from the 1906 version by Charlie Mahoney that appears in David Wondrich’s Imbibe! So far, this is my favorite classic cocktail with aquavit. The spirit really shines, and the drink seems more assertive than the gin version. I have to say that for this particular ratio of spirit to vermouth, I actually like aquavit better than the original.

Aquavit and French

1 1/2 oz aquavit (Aalborg)

1 1/2 oz dry vermouth

1 dash orange bitters (Angostura Orange)

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist.SOURCE: BASED ON CHARLIE MAHONEY’S “MAHONEY COCKTAIL,” DAVID WONDRICH, IMBIBE!

The gin one calls for an orange twist. I had a lemon. The drink’s a bit small for the glass in the photo but it was the best one I had to capture the turn-of-the-century feel of this.

Friday, September 16, 2011

A drink for summer’s end: green and gold notes, hints of spice and smoke. There are some finicky little measures, but it has several things that could easily overpower it so I’ve specified the amounts to keep it under control.

Last Will and Testament

2 oz gin (Tanqueray)

1/2 oz Green Chartreuse

1/2 oz Velvet Falernum

1/2 oz lime juice

1/2 oz lemon juice

1 tsp Ardbeg single malt

1/4 tsp allspice dram

2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Sunday morning, praise the dawningIt's just a restless feeling by my sideEarly dawning, Sunday morningIt's just the wasted years so close behind

—Lou Reed and John Cale

One of my favorite wine cocktails. I’ve never liked ordinary Mimosas much but enjoyed them with Campari. It gives the drink an edge and there’s that nice sunrise color. I’m not sure when I started drinking them that way, though I remember sitting around with my friends in New York one morning and we all knew what to do without having to discuss it really, beyond saying how much we liked them. Here’s a version with a couple of dashes of other bitters besides.

I should remember this as a use for oranges I’ve peeled for twists.

Sunday Morning

juice of a Valencia orange

1/2 oz Campari

2 dashes orange bitters

2 dashes Angostura bitters

4 oz dry sparkling wine or to taste (prosecco)

Shake all but sparkling wine with ice and strain into a chilled wine glass. Add bubbles, orange twist.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Sunday, September 4, 2011

As you might guess, this is a variation on the classic French 75 that’s made with pear brandy. I like Poire Williams a lot but it’s very assertive, so I tend to use it in conjunction with some other base to keep the pear from becoming too dominant.

Pear 75

1 oz Poire Williams eau-de-vie

1 oz old tom gin

1/2 oz lemon juice

1 tsp simple syrup

brut champagne to fill

Fill an 8-10 ounce glass halfway with crushed ice. Combine all but champagne with ice in a shaker and strain into the prepared glass. Fill with Champagne and stir gently. Lemon twist.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

I did two versions: one with crushed ice, one without. I could go either way. The ice one was very cold. The up one was soft and velvety.

Friday, September 2, 2011

You sometimes see an article that attempts to persuade people who think they don’t like gin that they’ve just had a bad drink. (Usually the case.) The Reverse Martini might do the same for the reputation of vermouth. I doubt many people in so-called Martini bars have any idea what vermouth tastes like. If they do, it was a nip of the stuff they picked up cheap and tasted warm, then left open in the cupboard to oxidize for the next several years. All those customers who are told they want a Martini made with that goofy atomizer should try a decent vermouth drink with a reliable brand that’s been stored they way you would an open bottle of wine, which is what vermouth is.

Reportedly, Julia Child liked this cocktail. She had taste and liked a bit of booze as much as the next, so she ought to have known.

Reverse Martini

2 oz dry vermouth (Dolin)

1/2 oz dry gin (Tanqueray)

1-2 dashes orange bitters (Angostura Orange)

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist.

I’ve taken my standard Martini recipe and just inverted it. The housemate and I tried a Cocchi Americano one too, which was richer and very different. He liked the Cocchi a little better than I did, though both were good pre-prandial cocktails.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Have some madeira, m’dear
You really have nothing to fear
I’m not trying to tempt you, that wouldn’t be right
You shouldn’t drink spirits at this time of night

—Madeira M’ Dear, Michael Flanders and Donald Swann

This first in a wine cocktail series is based on Madeira, of which I am fond more than somewhat. For the Madeira in this, I used a 5-year Malmsey, a very tasty wine, so I’ve called this drink after George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, who was supposed to have been drowned in a butt of Malmsey, poor devil. Whatever really happened, it’s still a hell of a way to go. Everybody raise a glass to old George.

George Plantagenet Cocktail

2 oz Madeira

1 oz gold Barbados rum

1/2 oz lemon juice

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Friday, August 19, 2011

I had a great Pear Sidecar at Rams Head in NW Portland that was made from Edgefield Distillery’s own pear brandy. The one I show here combines cognac with a touch of Poire Williams. Feels very French to me for some reason—not just because of the two brandies but there’s just something about pear.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Life’s a little hectic here at the the lounge lately. I came up with this one few nights ago and barely had time to take the picture, let alone write something. It's got a good dose of Pedro Ximénez sherry held in check by a little Amaro Nonino.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Rich, elegant, herbal. The housemate and I are of differing views on whether this is best with bitters or without. Good either way, though for me, the bitters adds an astringency that makes it and dries the whole thing down. But I suppose adjusting the ratio of Chartreuse to cognac would cut the sweet a bit while preserving what the housemate calls a roundness. I see his point.

The Breakfast of Champions, as a certain Vonnegut waitress tells us, is the Martini, though Dr Johnson notes that to be a hero, one must drink brandy.

Friday, August 5, 2011

A preacher drank some ginger, he said he did it for ’flu
That was his excuse for having the jake leg too
He got the jake leg too, he got the jake leg too.

—I Got the Jake Leg Too, recorded by the Ray Brothers, 1930

The distinction between alcoholic beverages and medicinal preparations has not always been sharply drawn, though Prohibition in the U.S. helped to force the issue. Sometimes a patent medicine was all the booze one could put a hand to. Patent medicines were often dangerous in their own right, but Jamaica ginger extract or “jake,” which had been harmless for years, became the means by which a couple of bootleggers poisoned thousands of people with an additive they believed was harmless, causing often permanent paralysis of the limbs and other symptoms.

The jake leg story haunts me, so I was grimly amused to find recipes with dashes of Jamaica ginger in the elegant Café Royal Cocktail Book. While the poisoning episode seems confined to the early part of 1930 and the victims were drinking a couple of ounces of the stuff mixed with cola, here’s a patent medicine turning up in some Canadian whiskey cocktails. In light of the history, it’s hard not to feel a little spooked.

Nevertheless, I wondered what they tasted like.

There’s a recipe for something called “Flu,” (nice macabre touch), which contains 3/4 Canadian Club Whisky, 1/4 lemon juice, 1 dash Jamaica ginger, 3 dashes rock candy syrup, 3 dashes ginger brandy. The instructions say to shake and strain but do not ice. Leaving aside the question of why anybody would bother to strain something like this without ice, I’m wondering if anyone actually drank this for flu or whether it simply tasted like one might. I think I’ll pass.

Then we have the Hot Deck. It sounds like a Manhattan with a little Jamaica ginger in place of the bitters. Now we’re getting somewhere. Here it is, with plain culinary ginger extract standing in for the jake.

Though not excellent, this is a perfectly drinkable cocktail. It may not be accidental that the dash of ginger is put first since it takes over the whole thing, and blended whiskey, had I actually used it, would probably fare worse.

These drinks also turn up in the venerable CocktailDB, along with other Jamaica ginger recipes. I tried another, Here’s How, which seems to refer to how to make a weird drink out of good ingredients. Don’t. There is even a nifty icon on the CocktailDB home page called Strange Drink Chemistry that talks about Jamaica ginger and links to the recipes. While they don’t look very nice, they probably won’t poison you.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Another scotch cocktail for the dank chill on the hills around the Fogged In Lounge. This one’s for my buddy Matt who gave me that swell bottle of Peat Monster. Many good drinks have come out of said bottle.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

I’m sending this one out to DJ HawaiianShirt, wizard of the aging barrel and the inspiration for this post. We were discussing a recipe I submitted for his excellent MxMo in April, and I said that the results varied with the brand of mango nectar used. This variation isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you want the spirits to be fairly forward in a mango drink, it’s worth noting that the thickness and intensity of mango nectar are widely different from brand to brand.

So I decided to taste some products that were available within walking distance of my front door. Alas, one of the nicer brands for mixing I had found months back had vanished without a trace. (I can’t even remember the name.) This left Ceres, Looza, R.W. Knudsen and a fresh juice product I had never seen before from Mollie Stone’s, a local supermarket chain. Another item I would’ve included, a national brand, was left out of the contest due to the presence of high fructose corn syrup. (Yeah, I know—it’s in everything. We can do without it this once.)

The testing procedure for each of these brands was simple: taste it by itself, then mixed 4:3 with Mount Gay Eclipse. The nectar would be evaluated on its own merits, the degree to which it tasted like mango, and how well it played with the rum. The tasting notes below list the brands in the order in which we tried them. We went through all the brands for each of the two parts of the test separately, though for convenience, all the notes are shown together under the name of the brand.MANGO NECTAR BY BRAND

Ceres Mango: Of the two ingredients, the first is pear, and it definitely tastes like pear. Not much like mango, though tasty. Not too sweet. A little candy-like with Mount Gay.

R.W. Knudsen Family Mango Nectar: Lots of different fruits in this. General impression is more apple-peach than mango. Warmer flavor than the Ceres. Housemate preferred the Ceres. Combined poorly with Mount Gay.

Mollie Stone’s Mango Madness: Very fresh. Distinct mango flavor and somewhat thicker body than the previous two. Contains white grape as the second ingredient, which drops into the background. The flavor of the Mount Gay came through, though the nectar was so clean and fresh that a little sugar would’ve helped it talk to the rum.

Looza Mango Nectar: Rich, velvety, big mango flavor—especially on the finish. The only adjuncts are water and sugar, so it really tastes like mango. Goes beautifully with the Mount Gay but absorbs it into its seductive golden thickness.

SUMMARY

The Ceres and Knudsen were good as bottled juice beverages though I wouldn’t use them in mixed drinks that call for mango.

The Mollie Stone’s may have some applications in mixed drinks, though it’s so refreshing it might be used to temper something with a liqueur component.

Looza was the standout, as I expected it to be, though it tended to smother. We mixed it 50-50 with El Dorado 5-Year and drank that on the rocks at the end of the experiment, and it worked out fine. The rum and the fruit combined into a sort of liquid caramel in the glass. It’s a tricky thing to balance the amber fire and the golden fog.

With this in mind, here’s a recipe that attempts some sort of compromise between the rum and the mango.

I know—there’s no straw in the picture. (All I had were striped bendy straws.) Drink this with a straw, though. If you suck the Lemon Hart off the top first, you won’t taste the other stuff much. It’s better if the float just stays at the top and fortifies the drink as you get to the icy part at the end.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Life at the Lounge is in no small part aquatic. There are all manner of piscine and amphibious creatures of all forms and sizes. (A couple of ’em are bipedal and merely drink like fish, but whatcha gonna do.)

I’m playing a lot with Campari lately. This drink strikes me as slightly Asian with its citrus, ginger and almond notes. The falernum and Campari together seem almost savory, taking the burn off the lime without adding much sugar.

Red Goldfish

1 1/2 oz Cruzan light rum

1/2 oz Appleton V/X rum

1/2 oz Velvet Falernum

1/2 oz oz Campari

1/2 oz lime juice

few drops Peychaud’s Bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE